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Monday 25 November 2013

Am I having a mid-twenties crises?

If you for some reason don't have Facebook, or aren't friends with twenty something's you might not have seen this post doing the rounds

I packed-up and moved from Falmouth, where I had a job, cheap rent and a slightly insane social life to move the 250-odd miles to London, with promises from the media it was far easier to get a job I wanted and I could live a lovely glossy lifestyle with the odd risk of pick-pockets and muggings. 

I know live half way up the northern line, I've had one interview, that was unsuccessful, in the month and a half I've been here, and I pay the equivalent of three months rent in Falmouth in a month in London. but touch wood, I haven't yet been pick-pocketed or mugged.

If I am having a mid-twenties crises, it's happened far too early. In fact, I think it might of started the day I graduated University, possible the day I started this blog. I started renting a non-student house, I even started looking for graduate jobs. At the beginning the world was my oyster. I had lots of interviews, but not enough "real life" experience. Then all my university friends left my university town, I only had a part time job. I toyed with having a year out saving like mad and doing a masters degree. That never happened. I ended up in hospitality full time.

Like Madeleine says, we know to much about everyone lives. But Facebook is not my biggest enemy. Linkedin is. Every day I get emails telling me congratulate my friend because they have a new job. A cool media job. Or worse, they're having a two year anniversary at their cool media job.

In the last two years I've run pubs, clubs, bars, restaurants. Helped a bar move from Falmouth to Central London, helped redesign a restaurant, given insanely good graduate job hunting advice, despite failing at it myself, learnt a lot about wine, passed my personal licence, taken a course in cellar management, had my gut instincts proved correct about people, been told the coffee I make is too cold despite being trained by three different companies and being a fucking awesome barista and had to deal with some very unpleasant drunks without using violence. And this one time I got to volt over a bar and stop a fright between two very hench men. I've done my national service in hospitality. I want out. Please.

Most of the above is recorded in 140 characters or less in ranty antidotes on my twitter feed.

As my mum so elegantly put it the other day, when I went home to eat the entire content of my parents fridge, "You have been acting like a student for the last two years". Yes thanks mum.

But she's right. For the past two years I went to work at to serve breakfast/lunch/dinner/coffee/cake/booze to the lovely people of Falmouth, and it's tourists. During summer I was usually working from 9am - 2am. Inevitably, when you finish at gone midnight you go have a drink somewhere else, which in turn becomes an impromptu night out because for some reason in such a small town you will meet someone you know out and before you know it it's 4am and you're diving off a pier into the sea. You go home have a few hours sleep and start the cycle all over again. No hangovers allowed, no bad days. You arrived at work bright eyed and bushy tailed.

By the time my parents where my age they where married, owned a house and where just beginning to jet set all over the world. Me, I'm renting, I have a boyfriend who doesn't want to get married and I haven't been out of the UK since I was 16.

Fortunately, my previous delusions of moving to London have subsided and as I get deeper and deeper into the overdraft I never once had while I was a student, I realise I need to dramatically up my game on the cover letter front if I want to avoid the oh-so-impending do I pay my rent or eat today scenario.

I am probably having not a mid-twenties crisis. Like the majority of graduates I'm having the post-uni blues. Which is slightly better in a way as I haven't got the money to have a crises. I can't do what my dad did when he has his pre-mid-life crises and buy a load of expensive tech. I can't afford therapy like Spencer from Made in Chelsea. But if anyone would like to offer me counselling in the for of a cool media job, that would be awesome.



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